Search - life-style

 
 
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Apr 15, 2008

An outside eye on Japan

In a nation traditionally seen as a monoculture, there's a multinational range of flowers blooming in Japan's current cultural crop. In the last several years there has been an influx of foreign-born creators — whether architects, designers or writers — and they are thriving in the local scene.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 11, 2008

'Chesuto'

Japanese live-action films about teenagers are many, but about children, few. This is largely a box-office calculation — teenagers pay higher ticket prices than children. Also, children usually go to the theater for a feature-length version of a cartoon they know from television, though there are hugely...
BUSINESS
Apr 8, 2008

See it on catwalk, buy it through cell phone

Screams erupted from 22,000 young women in flowery frills, boots, really short shorts and glittery jewelry whenever a model — dressed similarly — waltzed down the runway in a Tokyo stadium.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 4, 2008

'Cloverfield'

An old gripe of Woody Allen was that America hated New York ("The rest of the country looks upon New York like we're leftwing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers!" he rails in "Annie Hall"). For most of his life he had stuck staunchly by his city, showing the rest of America just what "leftwing...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Mar 30, 2008

Browne lands deal with WJBL's Koalas

Ree Browne, a former California State University-Dominguez Hills center, has signed a contract to play for the Mitsubishi Koalas of the WJBL, The Japan Times has learned.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 28, 2008

'Things We Lost in the Fire'

How easily we are numbed by routine. We wake up each morning expecting the world to be much like it always is, barely aware that one day we will awake to find that someone so close, so needed, in our lives is no longer there.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 23, 2008

You'd have to be drunk to be fooled by Japan's booze commercials

A few weeks ago the Asahi Shimbun printed a letter from a 59-year-old man who complained about a TV commercial for Kirin's Tanrei, one of those beerlike beverages known as happoshu. In the spot, world-famous alpinist Ken Noguchi is seen climbing a mountain, the Gipsy Kings howling away on the soundtrack....
COMMUNITY
Mar 22, 2008

Gallery brings Vietnamese art to Tokyo

Karen Thomas' Thai housekeeper is apologetic. "Karen" is down in the garage basement, unpacking a shipment. So down we go from the Bird-Thomas household on the sixth floor and find a tiny dynamic powerhouse, power tool in hand, tackling large flat wooden crates of art, flown in by Fedex from Vietnam....
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 18, 2008

Hey grandma, thanks for all your genmai grub

'Shoku wa inochi! (Food is life itself)' was one of my grandmother's maxims, which when I was growing up, I was never able to fathom.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2008

Media now gun-shy in Miura reportage

Ryo Sakamoto, a former editor of the major tabloid newspaper Tokyo-Sports, remembers the media frenzy in the 1980s over the case of Kazuyoshi Miura.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 9, 2008

The art of Frances Blakemore: a love affair with Japan

AN AMERICAN ARTIST IN TOKYO: Frances Blakemore — 1906-1997, by Michiyo Morioka. Seattle: The Blakemore Foundation/University of Washington Press, 2007, 200 pp., profusely illustrated, $35 (cloth) Living more than 50 years of her life in Japan, artist Frances Blakemore was a close and sympathetic observer...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 14, 2008

Sculpting the sacred and the profane

Given the boom in all things Edo in recent years — perhaps best exemplified by the explosion of interest in last year's The Price Collection's tour of Japan, featuring the artists Ito Jakuchu, Maruyama Okyo and Nagasawa Rosetsu — it is surprising that there hasn't been equal attention paid to the...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 1, 2008

Apartment "Sparkle Bicycle"

Not so much a band as the solo work of multi-instrumentalist Tatsuya Namai, Apartment is a bedroom-pop act with a DIY ethos. With its cheap-sounding production and instruments constantly on the brink of going out of tune, "Sparkle Bicycle" harks back to 1980s U.K. and U.S. "cassette culture" — think...
CULTURE / Film
Jan 31, 2008

Humanist harks back to cinema's golden age

How many directors make great movies after turning 70? John Huston did it with "The Dead," likewise Akira Kurosawa with "Ran" and Clint Eastwood with "Letters from Iwo Jima," but the numbers are few.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 20, 2008

Showa nostalgia documentary, baseball star interviewed, optical illusions

The Showa boom has yet to run its course. Appropriating the street address used in the title of the hit Showa Period movie series "Always: Sanchome no Yuhi," TV Tokyo pumps up the nostalgia on "Sanchome no Post: Natsukashii Rankingu SP (Sanchome Mailbox: Nostalgic Rankings Special)" (Monday, 7 p.m.)....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jan 16, 2008

Snow season's not what it was . . .

"Winter either bites with its teeth or lashes with its tail." (Traditional proverb)
Japan Times
LIFE
Jan 13, 2008

Let loose nature's way to tone body and soul

Ha-ha, funny isn't it, but Laughter Yoga has nothing to do with telling jokes. In fact, humor plays no part in this unusual form of the ancient Hindu discipline. Here, laughter has to be unconditional.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 13, 2007

Miami fairs party hard

Last Wednesday night, after Iggy Pop's free concert kicked off Art Basel Miami Beach (Dec. 6-9), an art fair that's the centerpiece of the world's largest conglomeration of art dealers, I came across a gaggle of women in short dresses scaling a fence to crash a more exclusive party in the back garden...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Dec 4, 2007

A cute and kind of sexy guide to Japan

Manga has conquered America. Or so declares the November issue of the U.S. tech magazine Wired, which carries a 10-page manga story describing how manga is reshaping American pop culture. Booming manga sales — which, according to the magazine, account for almost two-thirds of the $330-million graphic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 30, 2007

In touch with his inner Tommy Lee

"It wasn't so much the style of music as the attitude toward performing and doing shows. That's what we wanted to bring back from America to Japan," says Yasuaki Sakai, reminiscing about his immersion in America's Pacific Northwest music scene that began nearly a decade ago as the singer/guitarist of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 23, 2007

'The Number 23'

Any student of music, and especially anyone who's studied their John Cage, knows that if you listen hard enough, you can always discover patterns. Producer Brian Eno once described recording a walk in the park, and taking a 3 min.-30 second segment of it and listening repeatedly: patterns emerged, the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 10, 2007

Late architect Kisho Kurokawa's mecca built on philosophy

Not many people get to build cities and choose prime ministers, yet that was his claim to fame. In one of the last interviews before his death on Oct. 12, self-styled leader of the Symbiosis movement Kisho Kurokawa talked about the ups and downs of life as a mainstream architect, political maverick and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 9, 2007

From trailer park to catwalk

"Sorry, I'm having pure chaos!"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 26, 2007

'Vitus'

How does the world (and a parent in particular) deal with a child prodigy? Though Swiss film "Vitus (Boku no Piano Concerto)" doesn't provide any definite answers, it parts the curtains on the mystery, letting us share a little in the experience of getting to know and learning to love an incredibly gifted...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 12, 2007

Dedicated followers of suburbia

Think of New York and rock musicians and you might well think of Lou Reed, whose identification with his home town is so secure that he remains the only rock star with the guts to actually title an album "New York." Even Billy Joel restricted himself to "52nd Street."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2007

'0093 Jo Heika no Kusakari Masao'

The Japanese film industry makes many comedies, but few parodies of the "Airplane," "Naked Gun" or "Austin Powers" variety. This is puzzling, since Japanese comedy directors have been borrowing freely from Hollywood for generations, including Koki Mitani ("Uchoten Hotel"), who worships at the altar of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 5, 2007

Poster boys for Soulsville USA

Call it coincidence, or call it destiny. Either way, Soulive are breathing new life into soul music — and a long-dormant soul label.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 5, 2007

'Southbound'

"Family Game," Yoshimitsu Morita's 1983 black comedy about a sardonic, sadistic home tutor — played by Yusaku Matsuda — who ruthlessly exposes the dysfunctions of a "normal" middle-class family, made Morita, temporarily, the Takeshi Kitano of his era.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 28, 2007

Rebel yell from the desert

Saharan bluesmen Tinariwen traded guns for guitars, then set about gaining an army of famous fans
Japan Times
LIFE / Language
Sep 23, 2007

Cellphone bards hit bestseller lists

Like many other young Japanese, Rin, 21, punches her mobile phone keys very quickly. Holding her phone with two hands, and moving her thumbs deftly and smoothly, she quickly generates sentences on the small screen.

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji